Rhode Island Books

Although no doubt a useful guide to serious researchers interested in the Haffenreffer-Herreshoff collection at MIT, this work's value to the yachtsman starts with Appendix C - the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company Construction Record. This appendix is a facsimile reproduction of the actual construction records of the Company, both sail and power, in order of hull number, and including original owners and yacht names. An invaluable guide for those interested in classic yacht restoration and history.

I first saw this book while having dinner on a friends boat. I liked it so much, especially since I used to sail on a Herreshoff boat when I was a kid, that I got my own copy. Its really well written, and the Herreshoff family is pretty amazing. Nat isn't ever going to make Father of the Year, but he really designed some great boats. His son Francis somehow survived his father and made his own great boats. This is a beautiful book, with lots of amazing photographs, and a great story too. I never knew about all the power boats that the Herreshoffs designed, or all the boats for the navy. I think even people who just want an interesting book to read with beautiful photographs would like this book.

Like the book My wife and I like going to new places for a weekend .

Battery B served throughout the war in the Second Corps. The outfit saw its first action at Ball's Bluff. From there, the battery eventually accompanied the Union army to the Peninsula and was engaged at Fair Oaks, Savage Station, Glendale and Malvern Hill. Next, the battery fought at Antietam, and then, at Fredericksburg, the outfit followed the infantry in close support in front of Marye's Heights. At Gettysburg, the battery was part of the artillery that held Cemetery Hill. The intensity of the action in the battery's front can be noted by the fact that one Confederate cannon ball struck and lodged in the muzzle of one of the Rhode Islander's guns. After Gettysburg, the battery continued to serve with distinction at Mine Run, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg.

Shortly after the settlement of Providence, Rhode Island, in 1636, the land within the present-day streets of Olney, Hope, Wickenden, and Main was known to have been the site of "shares" or "home lots" of five acres each belonging to Roger Williams and the other original settlers of the town. Because the precise location of these homesteads had remained in doubt for some time, Charles Hopkins undertook to pinpoint their location in this volume. Drawing on a small book from the year 1660 in the handwriting of Roger Williams, which the compiler discovered in the office of the City Clerk, he was able to resolve the mystery of the location and ownership of the home lots once and for all.

At the outset, The Home Lots recapitulates the settlement of Providence by Roger Williams and his followers, complete with transcriptions of the deed signed by Williams, Benedict Arnold, and the Sachems of the Narragansetts, as well as diagrams and related documents showing the division of the land into home lots. The balance of the volume consists of short biographical and genealogical essays of the following owners of the lots, virtually all of them containing references to the settlers' origins in England: Daniel Abbott, Thomas Angell, Benedict Arnold, William Arnold, Hugh Bewit, Chad Brown, William Burrows, William Carpenter, Robert Cole, Alice Daniels, Gregory Dexter, John Field, William Field, Adam Goodwin, John Greene, Sr., John Greene, Jr., Thomas Harris, William Harris, Edward Hart, William Hawkins, Ezekiel Holliman, Thomas Hopkins, Thomas James, John Lippitt, William Mann, Edward Manton, Thomas Olney, Thomas Painter, Nicholas Power, Widow Reeve, William Reynolds, George Rickard, Richard Scott, Jane Sears, John Smith, John Sweet, John Throckmorton, Joane Tyler, Christopher Unthank, Joshua Verin, Matthew Waller, John Warner, Richard Waterman, Robert West, Stukely Westcott, Francis Weston, Matthew Weston, William Wickenden, Francis Wickes, Robert Williams, Roger Williams, and Joshua Winson.

This book is LOADED with photos of the past.
I first purchased it because it's the town that I grew up in and both my parents were born and raised in.
While paging through, I first found a photo of my great-uncle. Then as a flipped through a few more pages I found a class photo of my very own mother!

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

This is a valuable book (resource) for budding entrepreneurs. It seems to try to cover all the bases for starting a small business, but it can't do them all well in the space available between its covers. The book is only 288 pages long. If you are in the planning stages of starting a small business, then I highly recommend you get a copy of this book. Read it, study it, and outline it. There are helpful checklists to help you grasp the subjects. You will come up with a plethora of keywords and terms that you will want to google to find Web pages giving more detailed (and maybe more current) information.

I am a SCORE counselor (Senior Corps of Retired Executives) who typically does face-to-face counseling sessions three nights a month. It would really be neat if my clients would read this book BEFORE they came to their session with me because they would pretty much be "educated customers" ready to ask educated questions. Our sessions would be so much more beneficial.

My favorite chapters were:

1. Initial business concerns
2. Your business' structure
3. Business start-up details
5. Sources of business assistance (SCORE is mentioned here)
7. Your smart business plan (and a good sample plan is included)
8. Obtaining the financing you need

The book is weak when it comes to how the Internet can be used in corresponding, hiring, and marketing. But this is just one example of how googling keywords and concepts found in the book will make the book more complete. Don't treat the book as authoritative on the law. It isn't. Nor was it ever intended to be. It is light on tax information as it relates to small business.

I was particularly impressed with the material presented in Chapter 2: Choice of Legal Entity. That subject is sorely ignored in most small business books, and it is critically important. It is a subject I regularly must spend a great deal of time discussing at my SCORE sessions. This book does a pretty good job on the topic.

Chapters 4 and 9 through 12 are easy to find fault with. The topic of each could fill a book. But having these topics covered definitely will help a budding entrepreneur know some of the issues they raise.

I would have liked the book more if Chapter 6 (marketing) had been less superficial. When I read it I got the impression that the author was more a public relations expert than a marketing expert. I generally categorize public relations as a subset of marketing. Marketing includes advertising, public relations, and a whole host of other promotion techniques. I did not get this message when I read the book. I also would have liked the book better if the Internet, email, and Web sites had been discussed more. But there are many books on those subjects. Therefore, I can't complain too much about the limited discussion of computers.

When you read this book it may feel a little like it was produced on an assembly line. Maybe it was? There are 51 versions of this book sold; one for each state and the District of Columbia. Content is king, and this book has it. 5 stars!

Adolphe Braun was one of the biggest French publishers of photographs. The book gives a very good overview of the various activities of this important photographer, who started a publishing business. Adolphe Braun published many stereographs. The text does not pay much attention to Adolphe Braun and this popular Victorian invention. Not all information is new. Anne MacAuley mentioned the use of photography in textile and wall paper design by Braun in her book "Industrial Madness". Gisele Freund described the art reproductions bij Braun in her book "Photography and society". The design of the book is excellent

This is a more interesting book than you might think from the usual superlatives on the back cover. Because the U.S. government supported a rightwing dictatorship against Marxist guerrillas in the 1980s, and tens of thousands of civilians died in massacres, North American scholarship on Guatemala tends to suffer from political correctness. Complexities often drop out of the picture. But these did not get left out of In Search of Providence, whose author Patricia Foxen follows K'iche' Mayas from their paranoia-inducing home town in Quiché Department to their paranoia-inducing existence in Providence, Rhode Island.
The town of Xinxuc (a pseudonym) is the kind of place that the army struck preemptively, killing off Catholic catechists and their families as suspected subversives before the guerrillas could make inroads. Xinxucians began reaching Providence in the mid-1980s, after most of the army killing had ended, but rife with traumatic memories of what they had done to each other at the army's command. Ironically, the first to make it to Providence were not the most direct victims of army persecution--such people were already dead or too repressed to have the money needed to go north. Instead, the first to arrive were in large part the agents of army repression--the local civil patrol leaders who had helped the army do all that killing.
One of the first Xinxucians to reach Providence was an ex-civil patrol leader named Cipriano. He offers hospitality to newcomers in order to charge them exorbitant prices and reputedly combines pastoring an evangelical church with witchcraft, with the result that Xinxucians are still afraid of him, not just at home but in the supposed safety of Rhode Island. In both locations, Foxen stresses, victims and victimizers have continued to live side by side. Illegal migration to the U.S. has become a common project for both, with non-judgementalism as a requirement for their precarious moral community. Unfortunately, their history of fratricide and their illegal status also require lives of subterfuge that are highly vulnerable to extortion. Meanwhile, back home enormous expectations and neglected family responsibilities feed what Foxen calls a "vicious transnational rumor mill." Still, in Providence the Xinxucians have found a city that welcomes cheap foreign labor. They desire a sixty to eighty hour work week and are viewed as respectful, hardworking employees. Despite anti-immigrant backlashes at the national level, U.S. institutions have offered them far more social services than they would receive in Guatemala. So Providence has delivered on some of its promises.
Like many anthropologists, Foxen is preoccupied with the problem of identity, which I doubt is how Xinxucians describe their problems, but she uses it to pull together important issues. One is that the K'iche's of Providence tend to be very ambivalent about their hometown, switching back and forth between nostalgia, traumatic memories, and shame over their indigenous origins, which they are completely disinterested in advertising in Providence, let alone deploying for political purposes. They have little interest in the Maya movement, one reason being that most of them don't identify as Mayas. Youth in particular are more focused on what they hope to find in Providence than on revitalizing K'iche' culture, which many of them seem to view as cruel and harmful, not least because of the way the army forced neighbors to betray each other during the violence. As for the violence, the first thing that most Xinxucians say about it is that they don't want to talk about it and many have little interest in the peace process or human rights groups.
Foxen has a keen ear for the contradictions of Guatemalan existence. If you know anyone who is heading to Guatemala with her head full of human rights and Mayan culture, this book would make an excellent choice, along with Daniel Wilkinson's Silence on the Mountain.

I came to the US in 1967 a generation later than the Graysons. I grew up in Lancashire where Mrs Grayson[the author's mother] was from. The author and I had very similar upbringings on opposite sides of The Pond although my stories would feature events such as our first TV etc.I met the Author and her Mother and Sister Ruth in Foxboro Ma in 1968 and have stayed in touch with her over the years. I was thrilled to read her book and very impressed with the quality of her writing.A Delightful memoir for us transplanted Brits.